Pitt Seniors, Graduate Students Receive NSF Research Fellowships

University of Pittsburgh graduating seniors and current graduate students have been named recipients of National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP); the nine fellowship awards go to four new Pitt graduates and to five students who are pursuing graduate studies at Pitt.

The fellowships have been designed to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and to reinforce its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in the United States.

As the oldest graduate fellowship program of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. The prestige of the GRFP fellowships helps support recipients to become lifelong leaders who contribute significantly to both scientific innovation and teaching.

Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $30,000 along with a $10,500 cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees, international research and professional development opportunities, and the freedom to conduct research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education.

Pitt’s winners in the undergraduate category are:

Carey Caginalp, of Pittsburgh, Pa., a mathematics major, who today earns a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and will pursue a PhD at Brown University in applied mathematics;

Edlyn Levine, of Pittsburgh, Pa., a physics major, who today earns a Bachelor of Science degree and will pursue a PhD at Harvard University studying condensed matter physics;

Alex Patterson, of Washingtonville, Pa., an electrical engineering major with a minor in physics, who today earns a Bachelor of Science degree and will pursue a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying electrical and electronic engineering;

Andrew Savinov, of Upper St. Clair, Pa., a chemistry and molecular biology major with a minor in physics, who today earns a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and will pursue a PhD in the biophysics graduate program at Stanford University.

Pitt winners in the graduate category follow:

Stephen Balmert, of Cranberry Township, Pa., who earned his BS in bioengineering with a minor in chemistry at Pitt and is a first year PhD student in bioengineering;

William Barone, of Greensburg, Pa., who earned a BS in engineering and bioengineering at Pitt and is a first year PhD student in bioengineering;

Catharine Fairbairn, of Belmont, Mass., who earned her BA in psychology and music at Barnard College and has completed her second year of study towards a PhD in psychology;

Matthew Koski, of Midland, Mich., who earned a BS in the University of Michigan’s Program in the Environment and is pursuing a PhD in biological sciences; and

Naima Sharaf, of North Andover, Mass., who earned a BS in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a second-year graduate student studying molecular biophysics and structural biology.